Turkey to Cyprus: Water is in the Pipeline - by Jasper Mortimer
It should be straightforward: the Turks have an abundance of water, the Cypriots have a sustained drought, the answer is to lay a pipeline across the seabed and pump fresh water from southern Turkey to north Cyprus. But nothing is straightforward between two states that have been at loggerheads for decades.On the north side of Cyprus, Turkish Cypriots want the pipeline to be built, but don’t have the money. They look to Turkey to finance it, and would like to sell the surplus water to Greek Cypriots. On the south side of Cyprus, a Greek Cypriot entrepreneur believes the money can be raised, but his government refuses to buy water from Turkey until it withdraws the 40,000 troops that have occupied northern Cyprus since 1974.
A consultant and former senior planning officer in the Cypriot Planning Bureau, Vassiliou has been waging a campaign for the pipeline to be built, writing letters to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2005 and 2008, and discussing the project with Turkish Cypriot leader Talat last month. He is the front man for a group of Greek and Turkish Cypriots who aspire to build the pipeline as a joint venture with public subscription from both sides of the island. Vassiliou admits he does not know all the figures involved, but working from a capital cost of 350 million euros ($463 million) for the pipeline -- a figure about 10 percent higher than that given by the Turkish Cypriot environment ministry -- he has calculated that Turkish water could be pumped to Cyprus at a price which is less than half that of desalinated water and almost one fifteenth of the cost of water shipped from Greece.
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